Mario Roatta - War Crimes Against Ethnic Slovene Civil Population

War Crimes Against Ethnic Slovene Civil Population

In accord with the 1920s speech by Mussolini:

"When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.

Benito Mussolini, speech held in Pula, 22 February 1922

Mario Roatta's "Circular 3C" (Circolare 3C), tantamount to a declaration of war on the Slovene civil population, involved him in war crimes while he was the commander of the 2nd Italian Army in Province of Ljubljana.

Under the commander Mario Roatta's watch the ethnic cleansing and the violence against the Slovene civil population easily matched the German with the summary executions, hostage-taking and hostage killing, reprisals, internments into Rab and Gonars concentration camps, the burning of houses and villages. Additional special instructions that included instruction that the orders must be "carried out most energetically and without any false compassion" were issued by Roatta:

"(...) if necessary don't shy away from using cruelty. It must be a complete cleansing. We need to intern all the inhabitants and put Italian families in their place."

Following Roatta's orders, one of his soldiers in his July 1, 1942 letter wrote home: "We have destroyed everything from top to bottom without sparing the innocent. We kill entire families every night, beating them to death or shooting them."

According to historians James Walston and Carlo Spartaco Capogeco, the annual mortality rate in the Rab concentration camp was higher than the average mortality rate in Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald (which was 15%), at least 18 percent. According to Monsignor Joze Srebnic, Bishop of Veglia (Krk island]), on 5 August 1943 reported to Pope Pius XII that "witnesses, who took part in the burials, state unequivocally that the number of the dead totals at least 3500".

Mario Roatta's war crimes against ethnic Slovenes was not mitigated by his having saved the lives of Jews and Serbs (from the persecution of German Nazis and NDH).